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Name: Travellin' Man
E-Mail:
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Afterlife.. (NSC)
Date: Friday, March 13, 2015
Time: 1:40:29 AM
Remote Address: 193.200.150.82
Message ID: 292630
Parent ID: 292619
Thread ID: 292493
>Interesting in what you believe TM<
Thank you, Keno and thanks for your interesting and thought provoking reply. I read your reply to Sweet Virginia as well and your beliefs are interesting too. 'Sermons of The Buddhists', sounds like a book I will want to read one day soon.
Like you I have no real faith in organized religions. I feel I should learn more about Buddhism though.
The book which really made a huge impression on me was, 'Conversations With God', by Neile Donald Walsch. It is not in any way a book related to the God in the Bible as one might expect from the title. It seems to me Walsch portrays our situation more as the Buddhists might but not exactly that way either. You can find the book in the 'New Age' section even though it is at odds with some of the basic beliefs of New Age Christians. It's the best book I've ever read and 99% of it made sense to me and makes perfect sense on why we are here. Like you and me Walsch rejects the idea of Hell. He believes in reincarnation and we live multiple lives until we, our souls, are ready to move on. He would say we are souls who chose to live here and with that choice we were willing to forget everything which came before in past lives and as souls. Because concentrating on this lifetime is where our focus should be. We do recover those memories of past lives later though. So we were not thrown into this world without our consent. We made the choice to come here. We are here not to learn lessons so much as to "create" who we are. The book goes on to mention "we are all special". All created by and a part of God. God is everything seen and unseen and the creative force in the Universe. One of the more interesting topics he goes over time and time again is on "Avoiding fear in your life." Our thoughts are creative so thinking positive thoughts is the way to go whereas fearing something all the time will draw that which we fear into our lives. So stress and worrying to death is to be avoided. Exercise caution, yes, but do not live in fear.
Before he wrote the book, and several books after, Walsch claims he was having such a tough go of it in life that one day he started shouting out rhetorical questions to God and much to his surprise answers started coming into his mind. Like a voice, but in his mind. The book came from these "conversations with God". He later understood that those answers came from his own higher self or soul. Regardless whether one believes that or not the book makes for a fascinating and thought provoking read.
Walsch is either the greatest liar of all time forming a cohesive, rational spiritual philosophy on the meaning of life or there is truth in what he offers in the book. It's for the reader to decide.
Other books I've read: The New Testament twice and many parts of the Old Testament. Shirley Maclaine's 'Out On A Limb', which inspired me to read other spiritual books like, The Sleeping Prophet, about Edgar Cayce. Great book! I've read many of Maclaine's books and books on Cayce. And I've read books and magazines about people who have had out of body experiences. Read hundreds of accounts from just average people who clinically died but "came back" to their bodies after their souls had left their bodies. I was telling my father about this about a year ago and he told me, his brother in law, a quiet, honest and well respected man had told him he had left his body after suffering a heart attack. Jim did not go around telling the story to just anyone. He was afraid people might think he was crazy. He said he was above his body looking down and watching the doctors and hospital staff work on him after he had flatlined. He noticed a light above him but soon the next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital bed. How can one look down from several feet away and watch their own body beneath them being worked on by hospital staff??! Your eyes are still in your body. Right? That experience has happened to countless people. Those kinds of stories are far more commonplace than what most people believe. And those stories even more than any books written lead me to believe we have a soul, a higher self, that continues on after we pass from this earth.
I just finished reading, 'The Afterlife Of Billy Fingers' by his sister, Annie Kagan. (She claims her deceased brother talked to her about what he was going through on the other side for months after he passed away.) She is an accomplished songwriter. A true story? Not sure, but it is a good read whether it is fact or fiction. I am presently reading, 'Proof Of Heaven' by Eben Alexander M.D. He is an academic Neurosurgeon of the past 25 years in nearby Lynchburg VA who fell ill and into a coma when his brain was attacked by a rare illness. He was in a coma for seven days. He relays his near death experience when prior to his ordeal he believed NDEs were just fantasies of the brain as most neurosurgeons believe. He is certain his experience was no fantasy. A good read so far.
I read all these things not because I desperately want to believe in an afterlife. Falling asleep and never waking up does not sound scary to me. One would simply be in a state comparable to what we all experience each night anyway.
What I meant by, > For me this life would lose "Most" of it's meaning if this life was all there was to our true existence in the Universe. It would certainly be less meaningful.<, is that so many of the struggles and little victories in our personal lives during our lifetime would be devalued and virtually meaningless if we could not at least remember those acts in another existence. Having good character would have less meaning, if when you died that building of character ceased to matter any longer. (Yes, people would still remember us after we passed but they would not know all we knew about ourselves and what we went through.They would not know the whole story. If you were framed for murder then you would be remembered as a murderer. No justice or meaning there.)
By contrast the rats would win the rat race by lying, and stealing, and the backstabber who got the better job by taking the low road and lying about his competition would be the true winner. He would have the bigger, better life than the victim of the lies who is still making the same pay. The backstabber is rewarded for his evil with the higher paying job.
There would be no justice in that. I have an idea that in the end the universe is fair. I admit I could be wrong. It is just intuition of sorts.
Maybe we simply cease to exist when we die. I doubt it though. All we go through seems like it has some meaning to me. A meaning beyond just survival.
I cannot forget all the accounts of people who had NDEs claiming they left their physical bodies and rose, then looked down to watch hospital workers working on their body with their vital signs gone, and then rose even higher into space above the earth, and some people (souls) rose even further into outer space towards "the light".
I don't doubt some of those people made up the story for attention but I feel fairly certain most of them are being honest. there are just so many such stories "out there". I'm very certain my Uncle by marriage was not a liar. A truly honest, good man through and through. So I believe we have a soul and that soul lives on when our body dies. By all accounts I read it is a painless and even wonderful experience. One day we will all know for sure.
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